jasmine chan eats

Happy New Year to everyone out there. I've just barely recovered from a hectic holiday season that involved over 7000 miles on the road seeing two different sets of family and an incredible trip to London to ring in the new year.

Despite being pretty familiar with the city and the many (many, many) food and drink options, it's always a ton of fun revisiting old favorites and discovering new ones as well. Here are some of my favorites from our six day trip.

Leong's Legends (and Leong's Legend Continues)I've been coming here since I was a grad student and the place looks exactly the same every time I go back for reliable, good quality Taiwanese noodles and dumplings on the cheap. If Leong's Legends is too full, hit up "Continues" around the corner. Same owners, same food, same prices.

One of the most terrifying and frankly hilarious times of year for me is usually in December, when the different banks I have credit cards with send a "yearly summary" of how much I've spent and in what categories. Needless to say, the major group that I spend most of my discretionary income is - and you will be shocked - food and drinks.

That being said, the end of the year is a pretty tough time for most of us, when the additional costs of the holiday period start to rack up, in additional to regular day-to-day expenditures. From tempting Black Friday deals to presents for family and friends to additional holiday parties and get togethers, it gets much harder to stay on top of everything from a financial perspective. Here are a couple of tips that will hopefully help some fellow food-conscious readers to save a bit of cash without sacrificing the need for some decent grub.

MAXIMIZING YOUR HAPPY HOUR AND BRUNCH STRATEGY

As I've written about before, finding the right happy hour deal can often mean being able to order enough food and drinks at a reasonable price that it basically replaces any need for dinner. The same strategy applies for brunch, which, as we all know, is DC's favorite weekend past time. I can't recall the last time I actually needed to eat dinner after a bottomless brunch (finding a place that offers both bottomless drinks and food is the way to go).

​Here are a few of my top bottomless brunch choices in DC which offer the biggest bang(er, with eggs) for your buck:

Bombay Club (815 Connecticut Ave NW) - $32 per person for an unlimited Indian buffet selection and champagne (non-boozy option is $22 but that's no fun). Nothing like washing down the excellent chicken korma with some bubbly. The decor is uber classy as well - excellent choice for visiting parents or family.

Agora (1527 17th St NW) - the clientele is a bit....fratty (I guess it is Dupont Circle) and service can be kind of iffy but do you really care when you're paying $34.99 a person for unlimited breakfast cocktails and all-you-can eat dishes off the Turkish small plates brunch menu? My favorites are the sujuklu pide flatbread and the excellent baba ghajouj.

Zengo (781 Seventh Street NW) - the mothership of all things bottomless brunch. Zengo is another one of Richard Sandoval's massive restaurants but it's worth braving the zoo on the weekends because for $39 a person, you get bottomless brunch cocktails (ranging from the highly dangerous sake sangria to mimosas in various flavors) as well as completely unlimited to the huge menu of Asian fusion small plates. After several visits, I think I can safely say I've tried everything on the menu now and it's all pretty tasty - especially when washed down with plentiful cocktails brought by the exuberant staff.

Well, it's finally here. After months and months of waiting, wishing and the occasional bout of peering creepily into the restaurant's paper-covered windows (that last part might just be me), DC-based fans of everyone's favorite cheesy ramen-making, pork-bun slinging Korean-American chef were treated to the opening of Momofuku's latest outpost this past weekend.

For those of you aren't familiar with the Momofuku empire, here you go. For those of you who are, it needs no explanation.

I was stuck in terrible traffic coming back from a farm in Maryland (it's a long story) when David Chang dropped his surprise Instagram announcement on Saturday so I decided to swing by and check out the new space on its second day of service.

To my surprise, many of the old Momofuku Noodle Bar standbys - the real classics that made me a fan in the first place - were present on the opening weekend menu, though we'll have to wait and see if this remains the case moving forward. I get the sense that the menu may be changing quite a bit as the strategy and overall direction behind CCDC becomes clear. Scale and consistency will surely be top of mind for chef and his team - CCDC is clearly a much larger space than any of the other Momofuku restaurants and I imagine keeping up with volume and quality is going to be a challenge.

So, to the food. I won't do an actual review yet as I'm due back at CCDC for a second visit in a couple of weeks but in short, I was impressed. We ordered way too much food for two people and there were no visible issues or errors with any of the dishes - just a couple of (very) minor service kinks to be worked out. Our server was incredibly gracious about *someone* having a nut allergy in my party and triple-checked something called the "allergy grid" in the kitchen to make sure we were in the clear. For folks with a sweet tooth, the dessert menu at CCDC actually has most of the favorites from Milk Bar so it's a good way of getting to try some of the desserts without having to stand in line next door.